Geoff Thompson, MA, CCC

Geoff Thompson, Program Director for the Sunshine Coast Health Centre, discusses addiction and co-occurring disorders such as depression, anxiety and attention deficit disorder.

Cathy Patterson-Sterling, MA, RCC

Cathy Patterson-Sterling, Director of Family Services for Sunshine Coast Health Centre, talks about how to support your loved one’s recovery when family members continue to come to your home and engage in drinking.

Cathy Patterson-Sterling, MA, RCC

Cathy Patterson-Sterling, Director of Family Services for Sunshine Coast Health Centre, discusses what you should be concerned about if your loved one feels they could handle drinking again after addiction treatment.

Cathy Patterson-Sterling, MA, RCC

Cathy Patterson-Sterling, Director of Family Services for Sunshine Coast Health Centre, shares ways to discuss having alcohol in your home or at family gatherings when a loved one is in recovery, without singling them out or making them feel “abnormal.”

Cathy Patterson-Sterling, MA, RCC

Cathy Patterson-Sterling, Director of Family Services for Sunshine Coast Health Centre, shares ways to discuss your loved one’s bond with those who are still using drugs or alcohol.

Cathy Patterson-Sterling, MA, RCC

Cathy Patterson-Sterling, Director of Family Servcies for Sunshine Coast Health Centre, discusses the downside of “near-beer” for someone in addiction recovery.

By Geoff Thompson, MA, CCC
Program Director, Sunshine Coast Health Center

Movies provide good lessons on what it means to be an addict and what it means to recover. Thoughtful movies, that is, not the sanitized and simplistic versions of recovery promoted in, for example, 28 Days with Sandra Bullock. This month on the alumni online program we’ll look at four thoughtful movies: Leaving Las Vegas, Under the Volcano, Hurlyburly, and Barfly.

These four movies don’t bother with superficial aspects of addiction or recovery. None of these movies is interested in what ‘triggers’ the addicted character’s cravings or their ‘maladaptive coping skills’. None of these movies labels addiction as a ‘disease’ or some sort of escape from life.

Rather, they provide us with a deep psychological understanding of what it means to be addicted. Like so many thoughtful works on addiction, they see the addict at a human level. The main characters are simply individuals who are struggling to make sense of their lives.

If you were at Sunshine Coast Health Center (“Sunshine Coast”) under our new therapy, you heard about the great psychologist, Viktor Frankl. These movies confirm Frankl’s explanation of addiction: “[A]lcoholism…is not understandable unless we understand the existential vacuum underlying [it].” The term, “existential vacuum,” means that a person struggles to find any satisfying meaning or purpose in life. Because of this, life seems boring and dull.

If you were at Sunshine Coast under the old therapy, the 12-step program agrees with Frankl’s idea. Narcotics Anonymous’ version is that the addict’s life is “meaningless, monotonous and boring.” Alcoholics Anonymous calls this feeling the “God-shaped hole” in life. Bill Wilson believed, of course, that this existential vacuum was why alcoholics drank, though he didn’t use Frankl’s term. The alcoholic was trying to fill the vacuum with booze. Remember that Bill W. said at the Shrine Auditorium in LA in 1943 that the alcoholic is the fellow “who is ‘trying to get his religion out of a bottle’, when what he really wants is unity within himself, unity with God….”

So many people in early recovery do not really appreciate how profound this idea is. They truly believe that if they quit the drug and get over their anger, depression, or whatever, then they will lead the good life. And they seem very surprised when they realize that this plan isn’t working too well for them.

But Bill W. and Frankl would not be surprised. They understood addiction at a human level. So, we’ll examine our movies and see if we can find in them any nuggets to help you fill that ‘God-shaped hole’ or that existential vacuum. 

Movie One—Leaving Las Vegas

Nicholas Cage (as Ben) and Elizabeth Shue (as Sera) do a wonderful job bringing to life John O’Brien’s novel, Leaving Las Vegas. This movie won 17 major awards and was nominated for 25 others. It’s a sad movie, but not depressing. And the great thing is that it doesn’t have all those stereotypical comments and scenes that we find in the sappy Hollywood versions of addiction.

As a sideline note, the late film critic, Roger Ebert, wrote his review of the movie on November 10, 1995, and said: “The practical details are not quite realistic—it would be hard to drink as much as Ben drinks and remain conscious….” Ha! Ebert obviously didn’t hang out with alcoholics.

One very interesting point about Leaving Las Vegas is that we really know nothing about the main characters. We don’t know about Ben’s ‘issues’; we don’t know why he’s drinking. All we know is that he is drinking himself to death. When this is pointed out to Ben, he turns it around, saying that his dying allows him to drink.

Ben knows exactly what he is doing. The movie is a plea for us to care for each other. It is a love story, and Ben and Sera care for each other even if the rest of society dismisses them. Ben knows that he could find happiness with Sera. But something makes him take another drink. This isn’t because he has a ‘disease’ or poor coping skills. Ben is struggling to find some sort of answer to suffering.

Ben’s real problem seems to be that he isn’t willing to fight for himself. Frankl said that happiness demands the “defiant human spirit,” the willingness to fight for your life. Ben recognizes his own suffering, he recognizes that most people live superficial lives, he recognizes that what advertisers call the ‘good life’ is all nonsense. But he is unwilling to take a heroic stand. Instead, he clings to his belief that only through drunkenness can he be free to be himself.

You should know that O’Brien committed suicide two weeks after signing the rights to make his book into a movie. His father said Leaving Las Vegas was his suicide note.

Movie Two — Under the Volcano

This movie with Albert Finney is based on Malcolm Lowry’s famous novel, Under the Volcano. There’s a BC link to the story. Lowry wrote the novel in Deep Cove, where he sobered up. And, interestingly, Nicholas Cage said that he studied this film as a role model for his character, Ben, in the movie Leaving Las Vegas.

Under the Volcano is one day in the life of Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British consular officer in Mexico. We spend the day with him as he tries desperately to stay drunk, despite pleas from his doctor, friends, brother, and wife. 

The setting is the Festival of the Dead, which foreshadows Firmin’s fate as well as his life. He’s not very happy. He has lost his wife to the booze, his brother thinks he is crazy, and his doctor repeatedly warns him that an alcoholic death is not far off. Firmin struggles desperately to figure out a future where he can find peace of mind.

The year is 1939, when the world was plunging toward world war. The Western world seemed to have gone insane—another world war, one generation away from ‘the war to end all wars’. Safe in the obscurity of a small town in the south of Mexico, Firmin has tried to run away from the craziness only to find that he, too, is no better off.

Movie Three — Hurlyburly

Originally a famous play by David Rabe, Hurlyburly brings together several small players in the Hollywood film business in 1980s (the film version was updated to the 1990s). All the characters exist in an ‘existential vacuum’—there is a ‘God-shaped hole’ in their lives.

Eddie is the main character. He’s a drug fiend and is soon to hit bottom. The other male characters are in little better shape. There aren’t any real connections between the characters, which they openly admit. And women are useful mainly as sex objects and as presents to give to other male friends.

Eddie talks a lot, desperate to find some meaning in his empty life. A typical example is this dialogue between Eddie and Mickey:

Mickey (Kevin Spacey): You don’t know what you’re saying. You don’t.
Eddie (Sean Penn): I do.
Mickey: No. I know you think you know what you’re saying, but you’re not saying it.
Eddie: No, I know what I’m saying. I don’t know what I mean, but I know what I’m saying. Is that what you mean?
Mickey: Yeah.
Eddie: Right. But it’s not like anybody knows what anything means, right? It’s not like anybody knows that. So at least I know I don’t know what I mean, which is better than most people. They probably think they know what they mean, not just what they think they mean.

This little exchange highlights Eddie’s dilemma of trying to figure out how to live a meaningful life. People only think they have meaningful lives, according to Eddie, but they’re just fooling themselves.

In the film, drugs (and sex) are distractions from coming to terms with his “meaningless, monotonous and boring” life, as Narcotics Anonymous would judge Eddie’s existence.

Movie Four — Barfly

Barfly is a novel written by the addict-writer Charles Bukowski. He based it more or less on his own life. Bukowski became famous writing lots of poetry and short stories and novels about the addicted ‘down-and-outers’. The film version of Barfly (with Mickey Rourke) has become a cult classic about the American subculture.

The central setting of the film is a bar, where Henry (Rourke) is at home, drunk as usual and getting into fights as usual, particularly with the bartender. But Henry also has a talent for writing poetry. A healthy-minded socialite appreciates his literary genius and convinces him to sober up and get serious about his writing. He agrees, and she organizes his life for him, including providing him with a place to stay and making sure he is introduced to the movers and shakers in the artistic world.

But Henry soon realizes that he has given up control of his life to her. Eventually, he returns to the bar and his old lifestyle.

A typical healthy-minded person would likely be perplexed why an addict would choose to be an addict, especially after tasting the ‘good’ life. Henry has a new wardrobe, is well fed, is making new healthy friends. So why return to drunkenness and fighting the bartender?

The problem for Henry is that, clean and sober in his new clothes and going to formal parties, he realizes that he has lost control of his own life. If a person is to be happy, says the movie, he must feel in charge of his life. For Henry, the only place where this is possible is in the bar, drunk and fighting. 

Obviously, coming to some place like Sunshine Coast is not even in Henry’s mind. But if he did come to Sunshine Coast, he would hear us tell him: “You are the author of your life.” That would make sense to Henry.

Bill Wilson, the legendary co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, would find the program at Sunshine Coast Health Center (“Sunshine Coast”) very much to his liking. Sunshine Coast interprets addiction and recovery in the same spirit as Wilson did, the difference being that Sunshine Coast’s program is based on scientific research.

Key points

Influences on Bill Wilson

In 1961, two decades after the birth of AA, Bill Wilson wrote a thank-you letter to Carl Jung for his influence on AA. In the letter, Wilson mentioned the other three influences on the development of AA: William James, William Silkworth, and Samuel Shoemaker (from the Oxford Group).

We know from Bill Wilson’s psychoanalyst, Harry Tiebout, that Wilson read Jung’s work. And we know from the letter that Jung sent to Wilson that the Swiss doctor confirmed Wilson’s interpretation of addiction and recovery, arguing that alcoholism was a spiritual condition that demanded a spiritual solution. In his letter to Wilson, Jung wrote that the alcoholic’s “craving for alcohol was equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst for our being for wholeness, expressed in Mediaeval language: the union with God.” He went on to tell Wilson that “You see, alcohol in Latin is “spiritus” and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum.”

Jung argued if someone suffered from an “unrecognized spiritual need,” then alcoholism was one response. Only spirituality (some conversion experience) was powerful enough to overcome the spirits provided by alcohol.

Bill Wilson learned about William James when a friend gave him a copy of The Varieties of Religious Experience while Wilson was detoxifying in Towns Hospital. In the book, James wrote that getting high on alcohol or nitrous oxide was a mystical experience, one form of religious experience.

William Silkworth had been Wilson’s personal physician. Silkworth had attempted to provide a biological basis for the common observation that alcoholics reacted qualitatively differently to alcohol than non-alcoholics, though Wilson did not share Silkworth’s specific interpretation that the alcoholics had an “allergy.” But what helped Wilson was knowing that there must be a biological basis to alcoholism, that it was not a matter of character weakness or sin.

Strangely, the ‘disease’ concept became linked to AA in the popular mind, though it was never really a fundamental part of AA. Wilson had never taken a medical course and knew nothing of Koch’s postulates that inform our current pathology models. He used the term as a metaphor and emphasized that “Alcoholism is a disease that only a spiritual experience can conquer.” If we take Wilson’s “disease” literally, it is the strangest ‘disease’ in the history of pathology, since no medicine can help the sufferer. That AA became linked to the disease model was likely the result of the public health professionals awarding prizes to AA, promoting the idea that AA’s influence was to interpret addiction as a “disease.” This interpretation was clearly antithetical to Wilson’s idea, which promoted addiction as a “spiritual” condition.

Samuel Shoemaker ran the local Oxford Groups that had helped Wilson and others in their early recovery and provided a rough version of the 12-step strategy: admit there is a problem, confess character defects, make amends for harm, and help others. Despite this early influence and Wilson’s recognition of it, he pulled the early AA out of the Oxford Group in less than a year because he believed that their views were too rigid.

SCHC and Wilson’s Interpretation of Addiction and Recovery

Sunshine Coast is very much in line with the 12-step interpretation of addiction and recovery, the difference is that we base our interpretation on research evidence and psychological theory.

Viktor Frankl had said that “Alcoholism is not understandable unless we recognize the existential vacuum underlying it.” Frankl believed that human beings had an inherent need to make sense of their lives at a deep level. When this need was persistently frustrated, then alcoholism could be one result. Research has confirmed that quality of recovery improves with an increase in personal meaning. Andersen & Berg (2001) conducted longitudinal studies and concluded that meaningful living was linked directly with abstinence, a conclusion that William White (2004) also found. Frankl’s therapy, known as logotherapy, has produced several treatments for addiction (Crumbaugh, 1980; Langle, 2005; Somov, 2007). Paul Wong, who developed the form of therapy that we use at Sunshine Coast, also has applied a form of Frankl’s work to help addicts recovery (2005).

Based on the influences of James, Jung, and Shoemaker, Wilson always maintained that alcoholism was a response to living the personally meaningless life. In 1943, at the Shrine Auditorium in LA, he described the alcoholic as the fellow “who was trying to get his religion out of a bottle, when what he really wanted was unity within himself, unity with God.” According to Wilson, the pursuit of drunkenness was the pursuit of a connection with oneself and a connection with some force that would provide him with a belief that he was ‘part of’, that he belonged in the world around him.

And the addict was disconnected even from himself. The “defects of character” and “wrongs” were symptomatic of alcoholism and maintained the alcoholic’s disconnection from the world: jealousy, anger, grandiosity, impatience, and so on. The Big Book uses the example of jealousy to show that what the jealous person really wants is to love and be loved; jealousy was merely the alcoholic’s tactic to protect himself from losing his lover. So, the alcoholic’s defects were those that prevented his being authentically true to himself.

The stories of AA members in the Big Book, which take up two-thirds of the book, are a catalogue of suffering that arises from this disconnection from the self and the world—and ultimately from any higher power that could provide some overarching meaning—as expressed through the ‘defects of character’.

If the alcoholic’s problem was essentially a separation from his true self, a separation from others, and a chronic feeling of emptiness, of something missing, then the solution must address this disconnection. The AA program is designed specifically to help the AA member reconnect with his authentic self, reconnect with others, and reconnect with a Higher Power. Silkworth contributed “The Doctor’s Opinion” to the Big Book, where he described the goal of recovery as “an entire psychic change.” Step 12 describes this as “a spiritual awakening.”

According to AA, this entire psychic change could be relatively quick, but more often was of the “educational variety,” a phrase borrowed from William James. This change specifically grew out of spiritual experiences, or what is called at one point in the Big Book, the development of “God-consciousness.”

Sunshine Coast also has as one its main clinical goals the beginning of the process of “transformational change,” a phrase from White (2004), though others have called this a “quantum change” (Miller & C’de Baca, 1994). Like Wilson, these psychologists concluded that abstinence may be the byproduct of transformational change, not the first step in recovery or the prerequisite to recovery.

Transformational change, for both Wilson and the psychologists, meant that a person began living a life that was true to their authentic self. For Wilson, comfort arose from a faith in some transcendent power, and thus the alcoholic had no need to distort or hide experience. For the psychologists, it was a matter of choosing a life that was true to the self, thus changing fragmented personality into a congruent one, aggressiveness into assertiveness, and conventionality into authentic living.

At Sunshine Coast, transformational change is essentially this process. We use narrative therapy to help clients understand how they have interpreted their lives in a way that is not working out for them. Their narrative also maintains they’re disconnection from self, others, and from anything that would provide some overarching meaning in their lives.

Wilson’s Interpretation of AA as a Personal Journey

The steps are deliberately vague. Wilson believed that each person had to find his or her own way through them. Recovery was a personal matter and no recipe could be provided. The most obvious example of this is Step 2: “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” This is the end result, but the key to this step is to figure out ‘how’ to come to believe. AA provided a book, Came to Believe, to help members. This book is 100 stories of how 100 different members found 100 different ways to come to believe. Wilson’s strategy was to provide a framework, not a recipe for recovery. He believed that only a journey that was personally meaningful to the individual would be successful.

Wilson and Professional Help

It is an interesting phenomenon that many AA disciples believe that Bill Wilson was divinely inspired. This may be an artifact of the conservative Christian influence on AA, in that conservative Christianity pervaded American society at the time and was, for example, the driving force behind prohibition legislation in the US (as was the women’s rights movement). But it is logically impossible to understand this belief given that Wilson had specifically mentioned the influences on AA in his letter to Jung.

And Wilson, himself, would have been disturbed that others thought that he somehow had a direct line to God when they did not. He had repeatedly declared in public that “Nobody can cause more grief than a power-driven guy who thinks he has got it straight from God. These people cause [the world] more trouble than the harlots and drunkards.” And he often said that “AA is a terribly imperfect society because it is make up of terribly imperfect people.” Ernest Kurtz provides a more down-to-earth explanation that Wilson and AA had resurrected a form of spirituality that celebrated human imperfection as not merely a fact but as the stepping stone to a connection with God.

What Sunshine Coast does in it’s program that Bill Wilson would like

1. Our family program introduces the 12-step program to families.
2. Clients attend AA/NA weekly. And an on-site meeting with local AA/NA members helps clients become comfortable in a meeting environment (although, because we invite only alumni and friends of SCHC, this meeting cannot be sanctioned by AA/NA).
3. Each week we provide a workshop on one of AA/NA’s spiritual principles, which also have a basis in the scientific study of positive psychology. The steps emphasize that recover comes from practicing these principles.
4. Each week we provide a workshop on the 12-step program as interpreted by scholars such as Ken Hart and Ernest Kurtz. This workshop highlights the origins of AA as well as practical matters of membership. It also highlights the influence of 12-step based treatment on AA, so that clients are not confused about certain things they hear at meetings that contradict other parts of the program. As one example, a long-term AA member may share at a meeting about how miserable their life is, when the 12-step program itself emphasizes “what it was like, what happened, and what it is like now,” because Bill Wilson understood the importance of providing a message of “experience, strength, and hope.”
5. The overarching theme at Sunshine Coast, which informs every component, is that recovery means reconnecting with self, others, and with a Higher Power, which is how Bill Wilson defined “spirituality.”
6. Workshops are usually conducted offering a psychology point of view matched with the 12-step point of view. For example, clients learn that Viktor Frankl’s recipe for happiness is to ask oneself “What does life demand of me?” is matched with the 12-step saying “Live life on life’s terms.”

 Twelve-step principles are also infused throughout the program:

1.  Staff attitudes are based on empathy and unconditional positive regard, just as AA emphasizes “principles before personalities.” They do not succumb to power struggles with clients; they do not tell clients what to believe.
2. Staff practice the spiritual principles, under the 12-step principle of “attraction, not promotion.”
3. Each client is encouraged to find his own way through recovery.

Conclusion

The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous has become synonymous with addiction treatment even though it was never intended to be professionalized into therapy. However, Sunshine Coast recognizes the importance of spirituality as an important ingredient in recovery and has included psychoeducation group discussion that focuses on the evidence-based aspects of the Big Book. Furthermore, since 12 Step groups are often the only source of recovery (particularly in small communities) for many individuals in North America, Sunshine Coast believes it is important that clients have a better understanding of some of the misconceptions that have fueled the controversy surrounding the 12 Steps.

Readers with questions about the philosophy of Sunshine Coast Health Center are invited to contact us directly at info@schc.ca

References

Andersen, S., & Berg, J.E. (2001). The use of a sense of coherence test to predict drop-out and mortality after residential treatment of substance abuse. Addiction Research & Theory 9(3), 239-251.

Crumbaugh, J.C., Wood, W.M., & Wood, C.W. (1980). Logotherapy: New help for problem drinkers. Chicago, IL: Nelson Hall.

Langle, A. (February 4-5, 2005). Addiction and the search for meaning. Two-day workshop presented at Trinity Western University, Langley, BC.
 
Miller, W.R., & C’de Baca, J. (1994). Quantum change: Toward a psychology of transformation, in T.F. Heatherton, & J.L. Weinberger (Eds.). Can Personality Change? (pp. 253-280). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
 
Somov, P.G. (2007). Meaning of life group: Group application of logotherapy for substance use treatment. Journal for Specialists in Group Work 32 (4), 316-345.
 
White, W.L. (2004) Transformational change: A historical review. Journal of Clinical Psychology 60(5), 461-70.
 
Wong, P.T.P. (October 5, 2005). Meaning-centered approach to addiction prevention, treatment and recovery. Workshop presented at Vancouver Community and Family Services, Vancouver, BC.

By Daniel Jordan, General Manager
Sunshine Coast Health Center

It is often easy to overlook the damage alcohol causes in our society since, unlike other drugs like cocaine, it is legal. Alcohol continues to be encouraged as a social “lubricant” in our busy world as a way to unwind or to have fun. However, as Emergency Services prepares to gear up for another high school graduation, perhaps it is time to review some important statistics about the alcohol-related health and social harms in BC and Canada.

Types of Harms Related to Alcohol

According to the BC Provincial Health Officer, alcohol-related health and social harms derive largely from four properties or effects of consumption:

1. Toxicity – alcohol poisoning (overdose)

Death from acute cardiac arrhythmia or acute pancreatitis. More often than not, alcohol overdoses affect the inexperienced drinkers who tend to be under age.

2. Intoxication – injury or crime

Death or injury resulting from violence, sexual assault, crime, alcohol-involved traffic casualties, etc.

- According to the BC Injury Research and Prevention Unit, approximately one-quarter of the 400+ fatal motor vehicle crashes that occur every year in BC are alcohol-related (Rajabali & Pike, 2008).

- According to a 2002 study (Pernanen, Cousineau, Brochu, & Sun, 2002), one-third of all crimes, charges, and prison sentences in Canada involve alcohol.

- A recent study by the Canadian Medical Association Journal showed that more than 21 per cent of sexual assaults are facilitated by drugs, up from 12 per cent in 2003. While this is a huge increase, an equally important finding from the Canadian Medical Association Journal research is that almost 90 per cent of these victims had used alcohol before the attack.

- Deaths due to toxicity (poisoning) and intoxication (injury)combined accounted for 2.7 per cent of all deaths in BC between 2001 and 2005 (Source: BC Alcohol and Other Drug Monitoring Project).

3. Dependence – alcoholism

Long-term excessive use of alcohol is directly linked to cirrhosis of the liver, some types of cancers, diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure), brain damage, and wasting of the limb and heart muscles.

- In a 2002 Canadian Community Health Survey, 3.6 per cent of the BC population (122,400 people) were estimated to be alcohol dependent.

- There is a strong correlation between heavy alcohol use and mental health conditions, such as major depression and anxiety disorders. It is estimated that 1.3 per cent of Canadians age 15 and older (approximately 336,761) reported experiencing co-occurring major alcohol use and mental health disorders in the previous year (Rush et al., forthcoming).

- Deaths due to chronic drinking accounted for 2.1 per cent of all deaths in BC between 2001 and 2005  (Source: BC Alcohol and Other Drug Monitoring Project).

4. The Intergenerational Effect of Alcohol - Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD)

A fourth source of harm that involves alcohol is alcohol consumption by pregnant women. Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, or FASD, is the leading cause of preventable mental disability in Canada. FASD is unique in that the harm inflicted is to the unborn fetus rather than to the alcohol-consuming individual or other members of society. Estimates are for every 1,000 babies born up to 3 will have the full features of FASD, while an additional 5 or 6 will have significant long-term disabilities. In BC, between 200 and 320 infants may be born affected by alcohol each year (Provincial Health Officer, 2002). A substantial protion of the costs of special needs education, youth justice, adult incarceration, homelessness, and adddiction can be attributed to FASD (Provincial Health Officer, 2002).

Conclusion

The ripple effect of alcohol in Canadian society is revealed in the statistics. According to the 2004 Canadian Addiction Survey , 10 percent of Canadians reported at least one harm during the past year from one’s own drinking (age 15+) and nearly 4 in 10 reported at least one harm * during the past year from others’ drinking (18+).

At our treatment center, alcohol is still the drug of choice for over three-fifths of our clients. For those whose drug of choice is cocaine, alcohol is often their second drug of choice. Even though we don’t treat for date-rape drugs since few develop a dependence to them, our date-rape drug section accounts for four of our top 10 search terms for people visiting our Sunshine Coast Health Center website. We believe there is a need for public education on how alcohol is a factor in sexual-related assaults.

Hopefully, Canadians will begin to appreciate that there are many ways to get hurt, directly or indirectly, from alcohol. One does not need to develop alcoholism to be negatively impacted. This message needs to be conveyed to high school students who often have a very narrow understanding of the harms associated with alcohol.

(*) Note: Harms associated with others’ drinking include (1) being insulted or humiliated (22.1%), (2) verbal abuse (15.8%), (3) serious arguments or quarrels (15.5%), (4) being pushed or shoved (10.8%), (5) family or marriage problems (10.5 %), and (6) being hit or physically assaulted (3.2%).

Source

This blog article is a summary of Public Health Approach to Alcohol Policy: An Updated Report from the Provincial Health Officer issued in December 2008 by P.R.W. Kendall, Provincial Health Officer. 

Dedication

This blog is dedicated to Richie Dowrey who is in grave condition in hospital following a punch to the face from a fellow patron at the Fountainhead Pub on Davie Street in Vancouver on St. Patrick’s Day. Richie was punched without warning or any apparent reason. Richie has two children. Our prayers are with him and his family for a speedy recovery.

References

Du Mont, Janice; Macdonald, S.; Rotbard, N.; Asllani, E.; Bainbridge, D.; and Cohen, M. (March 2009)
Factors associated with suspected drug-facilitated sexual assault
Can. Med. Assoc. J., 180: 513 – 519 ; doi:10.1503/cmaj.080570

Pernanen, K., Cousineau, M., Brochu, S., & Sun, F. (2002) Proportions of crimes associated with alcohol and other drugs in Canada. Ottawa, ON: Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse.

Provincial Health Officer (2002) Public health approach to alcohol policy: a report of the Provincial Health Officer. Victoria, BC: Ministry of Health Planning.

Rajabali, F., & Pike, I. (2008) Alcohol-related motor vehicle crash deaths in British Columbia: 2003-2005. Vancouver, BC: BC Injury Research and Prevention Unit.

Rush, B., Urbanoski, K., Bassani, D., Saulo, C., Wild, C., Strikes, C., et al. (forthcoming) Prevalence of co-occurring substance use and other mental disorders in the Canadian population. Canadian journal of psychiatry.